Silence
by InkyNeck
Summary: HoO spoilers. Percy died trying to close the Doors of Death. Annabeth has constant nightmares of Tartarus and nobody to console her. One night, she awakens and returns to Cabin 3, the one place that reminds her most of him, but it also is where her memories are most painful. T for language. Character Death. Percabeth.


**A.N. If you like it review, review if you don't like it because I don't want to leave you out. All flames will be donated to arsonists.**

**Disclaimer: I have never and will never own the right to the content of Percy Jackson and the Olympians or Heroes of Olympus**

* * *

_Annabeth was restrained; Hazel and Piper were stopping her from reaching Percy. The doors were closing and he was on the wrong side. Why was he on the wrong side? When she realised the horrible truth, Annabeth let out a choked sob. The Doors of Death needed to be closed from both sides. His fatal flaw of loyalty really was fatal. Percy was sacrificing himself to save the world, but what would be the point of the world without him_

_Tears rolled down her cheeks freely now, she strained to escape Hazel and Piper's grasp. While she struggled, Jason, Leo and Frank were working with Percy to close the gates to Hell. Nico was standing a distance away, as if he didn't want to understand what was going on, but like Annabeth, he knew all too well about the ending._

_Percy looked up at Annabeth, with an expression that broke her heart completely. He was as handsome as he had always been, even caked with blood and dirt, but he was broken, you could see the pain of living through Tartarus in his eyes; those beautiful sea green eyes that Annabeth had fallen for years before._

_"I love you, Annabeth! My Wise Girl!" Percy yelled. The doors were closing; there wasn't much of a gap left._

_She tried to cry out a reply, but the words wouldn't form on her lips .She squirmed free from the two girls grip and ran, but it was too late. By the time she reached the place where Percy had stood only a minute before, the doors had been sealed with him trapped inside. Annabeth's knees buckled and she collapsed to the dusty earth. She began to weep and sob Percy's name._

Annabeth awoke in cabin six, it was still dark outside and her siblings were all probably still asleep. Percy was dead. She had barely eaten or slept since his death, she wouldn't talk to anyone except to the select few that she was closest to and she spent her days either training, by the lake or in the woods. To summarise, she was depressed.

Percy was gone and it hurt her more and more every day, she had a fatal wound and the morphine was running out. He had left her alone with no one to tell that they were together when the nightmares came, or to hold her hand when the flashbacks ended. Time alone to mourn was what she needed.

Annabeth rose from her bottom bunk and padded along the polished wooden floor towards the doorway. She stood at under the doorframe and peered into the night, she needed somewhere away from everyone else. The woods and the lake were all full of nymphs, all of whom would gossip about her, it was too dark to go to the amphitheatre or the arena, the other option was the beach, and it wasn't safe to walk there alone in the dark. Her last option was her worst: go to cabin three.

She stumbled out of the doorway and into the shadows. Nothing could be heard apart from the soft whisperings of a cool breeze. Zoe's constellation was prominent in the clear night sky. None of it mattered; her world was still cold and bleak.

Annabeth treaded barefoot to the Poseidon cabin as she had done often to visit Percy in those first few months after the Titan war. As she peered through the doorway into the cabin, she saw it looked the same as it had always been; it was left untouched, even when he went missing, even now. Even Travis and Connor had enough respect to keep out. There was a smuggled 6-pack of Coke underneath one the bunks and his bed was unmade. Nothing had been removed like it normally would have been after a camper's death, but leaving it was a sort of shrine to the deceased camp leader.

When he had disappeared, she had tried to come back here, but she rarely dared and when she did, she could only stand to stay for a few minutes. She would smell the familiar whiff of saltwater and cookies that still lingered and memories that had been restrained came flooding back. There were days when it could fill the gaps in her heart or overwhelm her.

There were days sometimes, when Piper, Clarisse, maybe one of her siblings or just one of the campers would find her curled up and crying during one of her flashbacks. Chiron said it was PTS, that they would gradually lessen, but Annabeth knew that it was a bunch of lies, had Chiron forgotten that it was he who taught her to read body language? Hell couldn't be forgotten, it was a weed that had rooted itself deep in her memory and refused to be killed.

On one of the walls, an old photo was blu-tacked. Annabeth leapt across the room to inspect the photograph, it was slightly curled and dog-eared at the corners and had been folded before, but the two grinning faces in the photo were still easily recognisable. It was a boy with sea-green eyes who had his arms wrapped around a pretty blonde girl with Annabeth's eyes. They looked as they cared nothing of the world apart from that one moment, the love that now haunted her. She clutched the photo to her chest, as if it would hug her like Percy did. Her eyes stung and her throat was choked with a trapped sob.

The photo slipped through her fingers as she sat on the bed, pulling her legs up and wrapping up into a ball. If tears were going to fall again, then nobody would see. Weakness was for only the people who could be trusted most to know about it. During the months when Hera stole him away, Annabeth could keep distracted from showing her feelings by searching, but this time there was nothing to search for.

There was nothing to look forward to, only things to miss. No more 'Wise Girl's or 'Seaweed Brain's. No more adventures. No more competiveness, or 'who was the better fighter?' No more underwater kisses. No more Percy.

Her face felt hot and she touched her cheek to find it damp and streaked with tears. She tried to wipe them away, but they continued to fall, making her efforts futile. Tears couldn't be reined in once they had been unleashed, that's how they differed to emotions. Why were we given emotions, if they cause us so much pain?

Percy wouldn't want her to be in this state, he would want her to go on with her life, find a boyfriend, get a job, go to college, get married, have kids, be normal. As far as Annabeth was concerned, there wasn't a point in that. The odds were that she wouldn't last another few years anyway. She wasn't going to kid herself that it was alright, that everything was fine and would always continue to be fine. She couldn't live her life like she should, because she was supposed to do all those things with Percy, not a stranger.

"Damn you Perseus Jackson. Why the Hades did you leave me, you heroic bastard, you just…" she trailed off. Maybe she shouldn't insult him for the wrong reasons, but every time she blinked her heart ached. He should've let someone else try, just this once he could've backed down and let someone else be the martyr.

She laid still upon the bed with closed eyes, trying to remember Perseus Jackson, her boyfriend. It was funny; she knew that it put her through agony, but some deeply embedded, masochistic part of her liked the pain, it proved that he had been real and not some invention of her insane imagination.

She could end it all tonight with a quick slash with the knife; be in his arms again. Annabeth knew she wouldn't, she would if she wasn't honouring the promises she had made, or leaving behind others who would feel as she did now. Death seemed simpler than eternal heartache; whichever the Fates had chosen would be the rest of her life. Mercifully, no matter what, her days would be numbered.

Her eyes opened, hopeful that it could be an elaborate dream of some sort, an impossible chance of waking up in a warm bed to bright sunlight streaming through windows. It was a technique that had often been used to no avail. Nightmares would twist and turn, whereas this was a straight line.

This was her own personal type of purgatory.

* * *

([Edit 12/9/13 British calender] I made a few spelling and grammar corrections, Enjoy!)


End file.
